THE ILX ALL-TIME SPECULATIVE FICTION POLL RESULTS THREAD & DISCUSSION

so is jane eyre

if only jane eyre were good it couldve had a spot in our countdown!

it's a thing

book 4 (and prologue too in retrospect) is more Kafka than Dante

despite enjoying the beginning i found lanark kind of a slog. frustrated man blah blah. i probably didn't 'get it'

reading Vladimir Sorokin's "Ice"... this is interesting on some levels, incomprehensible on others (I have already missed a bunch of references, I'm sure, as well as some jokes in German). On the fence about it.

I have gotten back to reading Dhalgren. It is... so good.

no

yes

That's one of the Delany's I just can't finish. 900 pages eek.

I put it down and was able to get right back into it! Really, the sections can almost be read as different stories.

his prose is so so terrible. I've read Nova, Babel 17, and couldn't finish Empire Star or Dhalgren just because the writing is so distractingly poor. cf this gem that I cited on some other thread:

"San Severina took him shopping in the open market and bought him a black velvet contour cloak whose patterns changed with the pressure of the light under which it was viewed."

this is like jr high school-grade level abuse of grammar.

But the fact is, almost any codic convention we can talk of in language matters is likely to be over determined. Where there's communication, there's redundancy—starting with the one between what's in your mind and what's in mine, which allows words to call up similar meanings for both of us. Indeed, if there's a codic rule of thumb governing the vast complex of codes which makes up life in the world, it would seem to be: the more obvious, important, and indispensable a codic convention, the more redundant it is—including this one. That results from all the other little rules, often very hard to ferret out because the obvious hides them, that obliquely replicate parts of it, that manage to reinforce much of it, that give it its appearance—in short, that make it "obvious," "important," and "indispensable" in the first place. Well, here I sit, in the middle of all these playful, sensuous sentences and codes, writing my SF, my sword and sorcery, more or less happily, more or less content. But I suspect there's little to say about writing, mine or anyone's that doesn't fall out of its sentences, or the codes which recognize and read them, the codes which the sentences are—and the sentences which are the only expressions, at least in verbal terms, we can have of the codes.

"Having to admit that it was pretty simplex after all, Jo went down in the hole to turn over the boysh and rennedox the kibblebops."

fuck Delany for writing this sentence.

Yeah, but he wrote this passage:

“There is no articulate resonance. The common problem, I suppose, is to have more to say than vocabulary and syntax can bear. That is why I am hunting in these desiccated streets. The smoke hides the sky's variety, stains consciousness, covers the holocaust with something safe and insubstantial. It protects from greater flame. It indicates fire, but obscures the source. This is not a useful city. Very little here approaches any eidolon of the beautiful.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren

I think it's somewhat unfortunate that he was talented enough to get his juvenilia published. Dhalgren is a mature work by someone with some definite stylistic quirks.

you're never gonna convince me re: Delany

has anyone else read Sorokin...? he seems like a big deal in certain circles.

I didn't get that at all. I think some turns of phrase are a little odd out of context, but I've found it very readable and others have felt he was capable of teaching comparative literature, so results vary. That's probably a negative for the "those that can't, teach" lobby, though.

Really, the sections can almost be read as different stories.

OTM

i find it hard to imagine anyone who loves sf not cherishing some of those delany short stories. i think wmc is a little harsh calling the early stuff "juvenalia" -- though i guess they are, in the strict definition -- but there are fewer clunkers as he progresses for sure.

otoh i am not the most impartial critic here because his very existence on this planet is kinda inspiring to me.

I like Delany a lot. I just found Dhalgren a bit of a chore. I think I prefer the "juvenalia" frankly.

Have you guys read any Joyce stuff or Pynchon? More of a chore imo, but it's been a long time.

Read both and I find both a chore.

i find none of the people mentioned a chore

well, pynchon, a little, when he gets too cutesy

Joyce is one of my favorite authors ever (Ulysses is a bit of a chore. never bothered with Finnegan's Wake). Pynchon I like: Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, V.

only read crying of lot 49 from pynchon

I've read bk 1 and am halfway through bk 2 of rothfuss in the past week. Trips along nicely, but may never finish. He's read harry potter, i'd imagine.

i've got both gravity's rainbow and ulysses on the shelf, looming at me, i'll probably get round to it one of the years yknow

"Joyce is one of my favorite authors ever (Ulysses is a bit of a chore. never bothered with Finnegan's Wake)."

So basically the Dubliners and Portrait are your favorite works?

yep. and there are parts of Ulysses I like a lot

some good poetry too

A noteworthy thing about Delany: he didn't publish his first short story ("Aye, and Gomorrah...") until he'd written at least eight novels (counting the lost Voyage, Orestes!). The stuff Shakey likes to quote is in those early novels. So yeah, Strongo, his early short stories are pretty good, because he'd already gotten a lot of crap out of his system. I don't want to come down too hard on the guy, because he's been one of my favorite writers for years and I'm stoked for the new novel this month, but strictly speaking precociousness ≠ talent. He made a big splash with the former, but I really can't get behind any of his work until Babel-17.

I read V. and as a result will never willingly read another Pynchon novel.

and I'm stoked for the new novel this month

lol believe it when i see it chip

Huh, Magnus Books website says November instead of October now. Still, I think it will happen this year.

why not DJP?

It set up several interesting storylines I was very interested in and wanted to see resolved, then torpedoed them in favor of a wholly repellent sojourn to Africa as told from the viewpoint of virulent unrepentant racists.

hmmm i never got that far into it. i put it down about halfway for some reason i was unclear about.

there is always a lot of questionable racial stuff in pynchon

er that should say "i am unclear about" ... like i don't know if i got busy or what but i put it down halfway through and didn't come back. i'd just finished "crying of lot 49" and i might have been partly turned off by the similarities and the nagging feeling that these plot lines, too, would go unresolved.

The first time I tried to read V. I put the book down when it got to the Africa bit.

I later went back to it because so many ppl I know RAVED about Pynchon that I thought maybe I had judged that scene too harshly. I hadn't, but I was going to be damned if I didn't finish the book.

Pynchon is now very firmly entrenched on my list of authors I think ppl only read to prove to themselves that they are clever. I would rather read a "stupid" but fun pulpy LCD media tie-in paperback any given day of the week.

Pynchon is now very firmly entrenched on my list of authors I think ppl only read to prove to themselves that they are clever.

smdh.

DJP I just can't agree w/ u on this. Pynchon is loads of fun, except when he's being a ponderous boor (boer?), and his enshrinement in the high literary canon is really more a product of the decade in which he came to prominence (lol 70s) than any affectation on behalf of his readers.

also new delany sounds DIRE based on plot description, and my bad memories of DARK REFLECTIONS

In some amount of fairness, the ppl I know who love Pynchon love The Crying of Lot 49

still, life is too short and I haven't read any of the Doctor Who novels since they went hardcover

i think ~ jade pyramid ~ sounds good

yeah i agree that pynchon's not for everyone but it's a stretch to say he's a meritless pseud w/ racist tendencies

49 is great, V is terrible, there is almost no relation between the two

49 is okay
v is terrible
vineland is okay
mason and dixon is okay (but funny)
rainbow is great
against the day is great
inherent vice is vineland part two

top tier: gr, m&d
second tier: v, 49, against the day
bottom tier: vineland, inherent vice